The Orignal Statutes of Cambridge University
The Text and its History

Dr Hackett discovered in the Angelica Library in Rome a manuscript containing a unique text of the first constitution of Cambridge University.

M. B. Hackett (Author)

9780521085199, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 14 October 2008

428 pages
22.8 x 15.1 x 2.4 cm, 0.66 kg

Dr Hackett discovered in the Angelica Library in Rome a manuscript containing a unique text of the first constitution of Cambridge University. The centrepiece of this book is a critical edition of the text with an English translation on facing pages. The importance of his discovery for historians of Cambridge and of medieval university education cannot be overestimated. The Cambridge constitutions form a complete code, promulgated at a remarkably early date (c. 1250). Dr Hackett shows that Oxford lagged more than 50 years behind Cambridge in codifying its statutes and neither Paris nor Bologna, the oldest of all universities, had a written constitution or code of laws at this time.

Part I. Origin and Nature of the Text: 1. Angelica MS 401
2. The Date of the Text (c. 1236–54)
3. The Origin of the Cambridge Statutes
4. The Formation of the Constitution
5. Analysis of the Text
Part II. The Text: 6. Prolegomena
7. Latin Text with English Translation
Part III. History of the Text: 8. The Growth of the Text (c. 1250–1300)
9. The Markaunt Recension (c. 1304–37)
10. The Old Proctor-Caius Redaction (c. 1385)
11. The Evolution of the Editio Princeps.

Subject Areas: History [HB]